Sure, a GPU doing a VLAR might be better than an idle GPU (depending from your point of view),

bill - You would have to prove that an idle gpu is better than a working gpu.

The GPU does not need to be idle, it's just a matter of BOINC configuration: large enough cache and if that does not help backup project (probably necessary anyway with the current load on S@H's internet connection).

Your idle GPU issue is something that the user can fix. Also such GPU might do more for the project if it's idle for a while and than gets again suitable WUs to work on.

bill - I run eight other projects, but doing work for them accomplishes nothing for SETI, does it?

Blocking it for hours or even days with a bunch of VLARs might indeed lead to less job done at the end of the day/month/year/whatever.

bill - I'm not "blocking anything". Idle gpu, remember? My pc does vlars in 2
to 3 hours three at a time. I don't consider that a problem.
I've seen SETI be down for over a month.

So yes, an idle GPU for a while might be better unless the servers would send just 1 VLAR in case they have nothing else and the GPU is idle.

You do realize you just contradicted yourself? Reread your last line.

I don't care how others run their pc, so long as they are not aborting work
that does not does not cause errors. Just because it takes longer is not an excuse to off load work units onto other people. That's cherry picking.

Every time VLARs are discussed I remember The Attack of the Killer 58.7s. In that late 2006 time frame with only CPU crunching and coarser chirp resolution, that was the granted credit rate for VLARs.

Conceptually, assigning work in a manner such that each host is most productive is obviously desirable. The .vlar exclusion for CUDA does align with that and is definitely needed as long as the 6.08 and 6.09 stock applications are in use on older CUDA cards. My impression is that when SETI@home v7 is released here, both CUDA and NV OpenCL implementations should be capable of doing VLARS without excessive screen lags, etc., and with less time penalty. An adjustment of the basic splitter estimate could be used to better balance credit grants.

The fact remains that VLAR tasks are harder to divide into small enough parts to take full advantage of the parallel nature of GPU crunching. Newer GPUs do have the capability to be subdivided so that only part of the GPU would be working on the least divisible parts of the task, but that's another layer of software complexity and there would be issues with validation on result_overflow tasks. That brings this discussion back toward the "Server problems" subject area.

Please don´t missunderstud what I and Richard says,SETI is a project that is spected to runs DECADES before any spected success could be achived (unless of course our little green mens give us a hand), so "fast or slow" is relative to that, the difference from a 12 min WU (GPU) to a 1 1/2 hour (CPU) makes little difference to the 50 Years or maybe more project.
Any help is wanted, just don´t need to be worried on that particular point, we are just warning because the video lag could be a serius problem if you need to use a not crunching only host.

And when we (or our children, or our chilren's children) DO find the elusive little fraks, I'm sure the project will have all the funding and support it needs to last another 500 years. You know, so we can find the next race, and then the next one, and then the next one... :)

Blocking it for hours or even days with a bunch of VLARs might indeed lead to less job done at the end of the day/month/year/whatever.

bill - I'm not "blocking anything". Idle gpu, remember? My pc does vlars in 2
to 3 hours three at a time. I don't consider that a problem.

Don't know how long your GPU needs for a 0.44 WU, but idle GPU for 5 minutes (until the next request, which might give you something else than VLARs) might be indeed better solution than crunching VLARs, just do the math, you have the numbers.

So yes, an idle GPU for a while might be better unless the servers would send just 1 VLAR in case they have nothing else and the GPU is idle.

You do realize you just contradicted yourself? Reread your last line.

What's wrong with that line? If the servers were able to react like that, we could consider doing that in case of "VLAR storm" which could keep the GPU idle for several hours. I was not talking about filling up the GPU cache with VLARs.

I don't care how others run their pc, so long as they are not aborting work
that does not does not cause errors. Just because it takes longer is not an excuse to off load work units onto other people. That's cherry picking.

Other people might be very happy to get those WUs, my AMD CPUs love VLARs for example. But since the project won't be sending any VLARs to GPUs anymore, at least not on purpose, we don't need to worry about much cherry picking.
____________.

Seems like our wingmens take few days off, normaly Pendings/Validated = 2x, to much pendings = to low RAC!. Now = 12282WU wonder to see when the number stop growing.

Yeah, I'm actually starting to realize what you meant about pendings piling up. I've never had so many, but then again, judging by the ones that have validated it looks like they're mostly going to be shorties. But still, a ton of pending WU's....holy moly!

Huge Panic. The panic thread is now way above the 200 posts, where arkayn usually would start a new Panic Mode thread.

This thread is getting too big for my 300 Baud modem.....

What to do, what to do? :-)
____________I'm only running one computer. Using 2 cores of an old Q8200 CPU for CPU tasks, and 2 cores feeding a single Mid-range GPU, ATI HD7870.
Look at the RAC folks, and ask yourselves why it beats so many multi GPU monster computers :-)

I don't think we need the 200 posts limit since the forum software finally arrived in 21st century and is splitting the thread to pages. Don't see any issues so far and I'm also only on UMTS, usually down to 64kbit/s.
____________.

Ok, I think I will have to stop using my Swedish, and/or English type of humour. Seems as if only people from England (Great Britain), and Nordic people get it.

Be serious Sten-Arne, be very very serious.
____________I'm only running one computer. Using 2 cores of an old Q8200 CPU for CPU tasks, and 2 cores feeding a single Mid-range GPU, ATI HD7870.
Look at the RAC folks, and ask yourselves why it beats so many multi GPU monster computers :-)

Ok, I think I will have to stop using my Swedish, and/or English type of humour. Seems as if only English people and Nordic people get it.

Be serious Sten-Arne, be very very serious.

Meow?

Yes, that was serious enough.
____________I'm only running one computer. Using 2 cores of an old Q8200 CPU for CPU tasks, and 2 cores feeding a single Mid-range GPU, ATI HD7870.
Look at the RAC folks, and ask yourselves why it beats so many multi GPU monster computers :-)

Seems like our wingmens take few days off, normaly Pendings/Validated = 2x, to much pendings = to low RAC!. Now = 12282WU wonder to see when the number stop growing.

Yeah, I'm actually starting to realize what you meant about pendings piling up. I've never had so many, but then again, judging by the ones that have validated it looks like they're mostly going to be shorties. But still, a ton of pending WU's....holy moly!

Now you see what i say, is not just about RAC is about the big pendings number (still have more than 11K). All the new work done have the target of Oct so may of the wingmens must still off dutty.